The Great Upheaval by Jay Winik America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into revolution. But in contrast to the way conventional histories tell it, none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation.

Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization. A sweeping, magisterial drama featuring the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage, including Washington, Jefferson, Louis XVI, Robespierre, and Catherine the Great, The Great Upheaval is a gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade that will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world

Jay Winik is the author of the New York Times bestseller April 1865. He is a senior scholar of history and public policy at the University of Maryland and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The New York Times

Jay Winik vividly portrays the tumultuous times in which America embarked on the great experiment, testing whether a continent-size country could successfully establish representative government. (Montesquieu, for one, had thought republics only suitable to city-states.)

USA Today

California Literary Review

And while the dozens of individual character sketches do indeed provide rich and interesting vignettes of the people and their times, it is their collective impact on the culture – be it American, French, Russian, or, perhaps, Ottoman, Pole, or British – that Winik skillfully brings together in o...